Viewing Francis Alÿs: Ricochets at Barbican Centre

The Barbican’s summer blockbuster show sees the return of the Belgian artist, Francis Alÿs – who has not presented a major solo exhibition in the UK for more than 15 years. That might be in part because Alÿs has spent the last two decades travelling the world making his film series, Children’s Games – which is at the centre of this exhibition, titled Ricochets.
Ricochets

Starting in 1999, Alÿs began to record children at play in 15 countries around the world: at the Barbican we see children playing musical chairs in Mexico, racing snails in Belgium, riding makeshift chivichanas at breakneck speed down the streets of Havana, and playing rubi in the Congo – a kind of flick soccer, with a meticulously constructed pitch built with broken sticks in the sand. The upper galleries, meanwhile, invite visitors to participate in their own versions of various games, in a series of immersive installations.

While what surrounds the children often gives a sense of poverty, disenfranchisement or conflict, the children’s creativity and ingenuity, their sense of and joy, is what prevails. The multi-channel presentation at the Barbican is particularly poignant, since the site was razed to the ground during the Second World War, and later became one of the first adventure playgrounds. Alÿs’s documentation pays tribute to children’s creative resilience and the power of play.